I used to downvote fairly often on Reddit as a sign to disagree or to push down really disgusting bigoted comments. And to be honest, it became a habit to just downvote without replying. However, now that I’m on lemmy and not Reddit I’ve been actively trying to not instantly downvote things and instead move on or take the time to reply. Has anyone else been trying to do this?
For any weird, bigoted stuff, lots of downvotes and no replies is hopefully the message an OP needs to receive to get the hint that they should by plying their recruitment attempts elsewhere. Engaging them is probably the worst thing to do.
I’ve had to remember that there’s automatic hiding though, and do that manually.
I was Reading a post earlier tonight where someone shared an anti Covid view point and dropped the whole big Pharma/government groupthink garbage.
Every comment was telling them they would not be accepted here with those views.
I checked a few hours later and the conspiracists comment was gone, but it did have the largest number of downvotes I’ve come across yet at 150ish.
An echo chamber we need not be, but conspiracy garbage we need not at all.
I just miss when conspiracies were fun and not essentially a threat to one’s livelihood.
From everything I’ve seen, conspiracy theories were rarely harmless. They almost always were rooted in antisemitism.